Ben Gibbard Quotes

I consider myself a songwriter... I guess the business end is my songs and the fun part is playing the guitar.

Being a songwriter, my job is just to write songs for people. I'm not attached to them.

I'd probably be a super wealthy guy if I had sat around writing songs and getting them placed like everyone else I know. But I write songs about people or after I meet them and they're somewhat biographical - they're fiction but also non-fiction.

It's pretty amazing to write under any circumstances when someone gives you an assignment to write a song, even if it doesn't get accepted. I've written songs a couple of times, some for Disney, that haven't actually ended up in their films, but then you're left with a song forever.

I will always really work hard to write as much as I can, but I also love sitting back and waiting on those big Nashville songwriters to send me some great songs, too.

I've been writing songs all along, and since moving to Nashville in the late-'80s, I'd begun writing something like 15-20 songs a year, instead of the typical three or four in previous years.

I'll always write music. Whether I release a record, whether I let the public hear it or not, I'm always writing music.

I make a lot of pieces of music that I never release as CDs.

When I am seriously composing, sometimes a phrase will come into my head, a catch phrase. When I was writing pop songs for a few years, as a career, separate from my folksinging career, I used to write songs for pop singers.

And I can say this, most of the people who have recorded my songs are songwriters themselves.

It's really hard to write personal songs. I'm not good at writing ditties because as far as writing hit songs that you pitch to the national artist, I just don't write that way.

I don't do sessions for myself ever. I'm always working, writing for pop sessions. And what happens is that sometimes I like a song so much, I keep it for myself.

I stopped writing lyrics down on paper after me and Jay-Z did 'Money In the Bank.' They're something I just hold in my mind.

I put a song out for fun, from 'Lucky Them'... I wrote another one called 'Love Song.' I really liked that.

I will write a verse or a story and bring it into a songwriting session, because that's what's big in Nashville - the collaborative part of songwriting.

I moved to Nashville to be a songwriter. I found out that was a job, that someone would pay you to sit in a room with a guitar and make up songs! It is the greatest job in the world. I wrote three or four songs a day. That's what I lived for.

I am not a big artist myself. I am, I guess, a somewhat successful songwriter now, but I think that my value is Ghost and my writing via Ghost.

I'd love to write with some people from the U.K., like Ed Sheeran, Emeli Sande... there's a very long list.

Before I started writing for myself, I was writing country records, and they were coming out dope.

I love writing songs for other people, and it's an honor when someone records your songs.

Obviously when you write songs you've got to record them, but just writing the songs is one of my favorite things to do.

I'm always interested in writing. I keep music in journals on an everyday basis. I'm always looking for ideas that can be music.

Some people are songwriters, and some people are just recording artists. I'm both. I write and record.

Getting a beginner publishing deal really helped me gain the skills. I just kept writing and writing. You just take everything out of life and turn it into an idea or a melody or a song and find the best writers you can to write with that fit you and know what you want to do.

You've just gotta go in and write from the heart and write the best material that you can and put it out. If one hits, hey, great. It keeps the legacy going. But you've gotta keep doing new material. It's the future of any band.